


The Letters Last Summer

by rosncrntz



Category: Cranford - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Loneliness, Long-Distance, Longing, Love Letters, Loving Banter, Post-Cranford, Slow Burn, non-canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 20:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13325475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosncrntz/pseuds/rosncrntz
Summary: Miss Mary Smith and Dr Jack Marshland wrote each other letters in the summertime. In the winter, he is forced to leave Cranford, for the bustle of London. Miss Mary is left heartbroken, with only his letters to remind her of him. She believes she will forget. But her heart is obstinate, and will not rest until it is reunited with him.





	The Letters Last Summer

**Author's Note:**

> I am yet to watch 'Return to Cranford', but I know that Dr Marshland doesn't show up again, and so that got me thinking - where does he go? This is a fic imagining what might happen after the series. This (I am sure) will NOT fit with the canon of 'Return to Cranford' - so just ignore that, and take it for what it is! Enjoy.

There was a period of two months, in the heady midsummer, in which Miss Mary Smith and Dr Jack Marshland were in continual correspondence via post.

Of course, Dr Marshland was living at Dr Harrison’s former residence, the pair having recently settled the consequences of unfortunate and now regretted past actions and Dr Harrison having moved somewhere preferable to his new bride and Dr Marshland having reason to stay in Cranford and needing a place to settle, and therefore a tête-à-tête would have been entirely possible given the proper etiquette. However, it was at this time, in this hot summer, that Miss Mary Smith found herself sheepish to leave Miss Matty too often alone in the shop, and the thought of inviting Dr Marshland over to call! Oh! Though Miss Matty hadn’t the puritanical nature of her late sister, and had acquiesced to Martha’s seeing young Jem Hearn all that time ago, and had allowed that happy marriage, the very thought was never allowed to enter Miss Mary’s head for a moment, impossible as it seemed. Dr Marshland, on the other hand, was not inclined to visit the younger woman when he knew that she would be accompanied by the elder. So, with no other option (and a sort of childish giddiness spurring them on), the pair were forced to send one another a good many letters, which were exchanged on the daily, and this task of theirs was never shunned not even for one day.

It was an uneventful summer whenever the summer was hot in Cranford, you see, and the only other occupation was to pick berries and fruits or to take long walks. Miss Mary found the heat oppressive, and the glare gave her a headache, and so she took to the cool shade of her room, and laboured over a desk which sat beneath the window, with the light dappled through the ever-moving lime trees flitting over the page upon which she wrote. She sat for hours, dipping her pen whenever she needed a moment of thought, searching her mind for the right words for feelings she had only the most fleeting understanding of, as if she was brushing only fingertips along the edges and corners. And then she would give life to that word in black ink, second-guess herself, screw the paper into a tight-fisted ball, and begin again.

_Dear Dr Marshland,_   
_Your letters are dangerous. As a doctor yourself, you should know better, and should refrain from sending them my way when you know very well of my tendency for headaches, worsened when the weather is hot. They made me laugh so much that I fear, after reading only one side, that I must take myself to bed with a migraine._   
_I know already you will make some joke on this. Before you do, I plead you to remember that – as I have predetermined this quip of yours – it is unoriginal, and dull, and therefore unfunny._

Dr Marshland enjoyed these mild and jovial criticisms that she laced her letters with. And Mary – who spent her days and nights in kindness and good-will, a state she was certainly not ashamed of, but admitted could sometimes become tedious – to have this light-hearted acidity available to her was a joy. It reminded her of a letter she had written earlier in the year, addressed to the same gentleman, reprimanding him for behaviour which almost broke her heart. She had said she would never forgive him. But her heart was pliant.

_Folly aside, I do enjoy your letters. You seem to be able to make the most commonplace things uncommonly funny. Your story about the milkmaid makes me giggle even to this day. And, when you write something which I find particularly funny, I can hear the words in your voice, and it becomes all the more laughable._   
_Do not take this as an insult, I pray. It is far from it._

She always had a fleeting temptation of writing something with more meaning. Even if it was only a single word, a turn of phrase, the smallest thing to hint at the true nature of her feelings, and the importance of his place in her life. But she would always wimp and wither away from it. She would think of a word. Love. And change it on the paper. Esteem. Adore. Admire. Relationship. Friendship. Her own internalised censor.

Dr Marshland would receive the letters in due course, sweating in the dry heat and awaiting some amusement. He tried to gather them himself, but occasionally Dr Harrison (who was so often over to visit, despite now living with a wife) would beat him to the door, and whisk the letters from the hall, flitting through them with the expectation of finding, in the third or perhaps the forth letter in the bundle, the name Dr Jack Marshland written in a steady and sensible hand. He acted as if the residence was still his and, in many ways, it was, for letters were still addressed to him on the doormat. Dr Harrison would then hand the letter with the neat handwriting to his friend, with a teasing grin, and smile to himself whilst Jack walked away, remembering his blush.

He would read it in the dark. That is the difference between the room of a man and that of a woman. Even in the lightest notes of summer, Dr Marshland would prefer to draw the curtains tight and read in the lowlight that managed to permeate beyond the material. Such frustrating words! But the most perfect frustration! Each stab at him made a wound that he smiled at the bleeding of. She was a wit, though she hardly knew it. Then he would draw the curtains just enough to reply.

_Miss Mary,_   
_Receiving a letter from you is always a delight and, so, I will endeavour not to make you laugh, as the pain of losing a day’s joy on account of your illness would be grief more than I could bear. But I do have the most ludicrous story of a man and his goat I happened to pass on the road. I shall have to tell you that another time._

Dr Marshland could not admit to the same reservations as Miss Mary Smith, so he wrote,

_I passed the church, Thursday last, and observed the wedding of a pair of Cranfordians. It seems it is the season to be wed, and the popular year to do it in. The bride was wearing a rather exceptional lace wedding gown and – though I am no judge of fashions – I cannot help but feel that she was altogether too dark to look fetching in it. I could not keep my mind, then, from imagining how much finer you would look in it. Will you wear flowers in your hair, I wonder, when you are married? It is a fact I would very much like to learn, in time._

Mary Smith, upon reading this, contracted a headache. But she lay down in the dark with an irrepressible grin.

September came. The lindens burned with yellow leaves. The evenings grew darker and so the writing of letters became slowly more difficult, due to their frugality with candles. The deterioration in their enterprise did not concern Miss Mary excessively. Dr Jack Marshland was by no means a wealthy man, and neither was she a wealthy woman, and the autumn is unforgiving to those needing light to write by.

And then October came, as October does, with that receding pale orange light that gives colour to the bark on the trees, the white muslin of the curtains, the puddles between the cobbles, and the faces of the downtrodden. A period of rainy weather wrapped Cranfordians within their homes, and so Mary was at liberty to take note of the orange shades through the thick glass windows, and read, and eat, and think often on subjects that – once upon a time – she would have written off as juvenile, girlish, silly things indeed. But indulge in them she did; and all of the breathless laughter it promised, and all of the warm hands.

The rain beat itself upon the glass in the late afternoon of a Wednesday, when the sun had dipped beneath Cheshire’s rolling green, and the earthy smell of the drowned peapods and the dirt in the flower beds was lulling drowsy lily-heads. Miss Matty was, at this time, mending a handkerchief which had been torn beneath the feet of Miss Pole and Mrs Forrester in a state of agitated emotion in a recent calling. Miss Matty was a little frayed from her day’s work, and so Peter was assisting her in the work, with gentle conversation if nothing else. The light was better in the kitchen, and so she took to working at the table beside the window, and Miss Mary was perfectly contented in the time alone that this guaranteed her, resting in the sitting room, and reading a small book of humorous poems. Comedic endeavours had never had such a draw for her, until very recently.

Miss Mary was vaguely aware of the clock, whose tick she soon became deaf to, striking the sixteenth hour, and she was vaguely aware of the need to put her book down, and prepare for the evening meal, draw the curtains, light the necessary candles, etc. etc. But October breeds in romantic souls a heavy laxity and her energy would not allow her to stir for the moment. The drumming of the rainfall was more of a lullaby than a cause for concern (for the roof was, indeed, leaking, and the patio could so easily take to flooding, and the stones would be such a hazard to their shoes in the wet). She was vaguely aware of the retreating light, and the ache in her neck, and then she became vaguely aware of a rapping at the door, and the pattering of Martha’s footfall in the hall.

Lowering her book into her lap, Mary raised her head and pricked her ears, and she barely had time to comprehend the voice she heard before Martha was entering the room, and she was stumbling to her feet and gazing, wide-eyed, at the figure of the maid.

“It is Dr Marshland, Miss.”

A jolt, like awaking suddenly from a dream, pulsed through her, and she hurriedly placed her book down on to the table, pushing it out of sight, and straightened out her skirts – which were so creased! – and said,

“Send him in, Martha.”

Martha nodded. Oh, if only she had been given foresight of this encounter! She would have mocked herself, had she been outside her body at this moment, fussing over her hair like a foolish girl, biting her lip through fear, looking around herself hurriedly as if this were the scene of some crime she had committed! Such foibles over Dr Jack Marshland! It should not matter so much to her, her reason said. But her heart protested.

The figure of a man passed around the doorframe, and he stood, smiling at her, and she sighed, briefly, relieved that he had arrived, and that she must then stop worrying about the arrival. What initially showed itself as delight to see her friend, quickly dissolved into concern, at the sight of the shoulders of his frockcoat, which, once a fine navy wool, was now almost jet black, having soaked up the flood of the clouds and become heavy with its load. His hair, too, that she had seen so often in curl, was flat and shining. It had become that way only in the short moment from reaching the door, taking his hat off, and waiting for Martha to answer. The dark material over his knees, and the droplets on his boots, were clear signs that he had ridden all this way.

“You will make yourself ill, Dr Marshland, riding all this way in the rain!” Mary cried, clasping her hands together, as if it was her hands which were bitterly cold, and strained from the slipping grip on the leather reins of her steed. Dr Marshland laughed, shaking his head and throwing the concern off as easily as he did the beads of water on his skin. Mary did not believe him – for she noticed something changed in that laugh of his, that was always so easy and bright. It was as if it laboured him. “I wish you had written, instead.”

“Your concern is very charming, Miss Smith. But, no, I felt it best to talk to you personally.”

“Oh? Well, would you like to sit down?”

“I’m afraid I cannot stay long, and I am worried if I sit…” He gave another bitter laugh. “If I sit, you may never be able to rouse me again!” He said this to make her smile, and it worked, though there was a horrid truth in it. “I am glad you are getting use from your spectacles.”

“Oh, yes.” Mary would have said more, but she found herself embarrassingly sheepish. She always became a little self-conscious in his company, but today was worse, strangely.

“I suppose I had better tell you why I have come!” he said, shrugging his sopping shoulders.

“Yes, I suppose you had better!” Mary giggled.

There was a moment of almost childish ignorance on Mary’s part, and never had there been an ignorance more blissful than that which was about to go extinct on this rainy Wednesday afternoon in October.

“I am to return to London, Miss Smith.”

At first, the weight of this took all of the breath from her lungs, and left her quite without speech, but with only the ability to stare at him, her jaw going slack and her mind racing to keep up with his words.

“To London?” she asked, finally, with a great heaving of breath that Dr Marshland saw rise and fall in her chest.

“Yes.” He almost forgot to explain himself, for the hammering on the window was becoming almost deafening, and his resolve was weakening like tissue paper in the downpour. “My work is taking me back to London.”

“So, you will not be gone for long?”

“It is work, partly. But my mother is in London, and it is her who – primarily – wishes for me to quit Cranford.”

“You are surely not bound to follow your mother in everything!” she exclaimed, though quickly caught her own tongue, and chastised herself for her thoughtlessness by biting down on the inside of her cheek. Dr Marshland would not have been reason for such self-punishment, however, because he saw Miss Mary’s words as entirely rational, and entirely truthful, and they made him laugh in self-deprecation at his own folly. For folly, it was. He was full of folly in all things. Part-blessing, but equal part curse.

“No…” he muttered, turning his head thoughtfully to one side as he watched the low-light easing through the window. He could not bring himself to look at her, now, and he felt that awful creeping blackness come over his heart, that steady dark crawl of ink across a fresh page. He hated melancholy. He tried, in all things, to keep himself from it, but no man is immune to the pang of grief. Steeling himself with an armour of a brazen grin, wide and boisterous, he took a quick and clumsy step further into the room and said, in a far brighter tone, “But I am sure I will not stay in London forever!” Mary took as much comfort from this as she could squeeze from it. “And I will write Dr Harrison as often as I can.”

“Dr Harrison?” Mary half-whispered, hiding her hurt beneath a façade of confusion. Why Dr Harrison, and not her? They had indulged in countless written words, in fine and scrawled handwriting, hers and his, a thousand thoughts spread out on to a page and folded, sealed, sent. She had even given, on one summery afternoon, when she was feeling a little giddy, a kiss to the page, before sending it, on a whim, that he might open it, and receive the kiss she had disposed, or perhaps even return it, touching the page with his own lips.

“Yes. So that Cranford will hear of my progress, until I choose to return.”

Funny, Mary thought, how even the most roguish of souls will eventually see Cranford as their home. But why can they then not stay?

Her impetuosity (or, at least, what her father would have deemed impetuosity) got the better of her once again as she pleaded,

“There is no possibility of you writing to me? Whilst you are in London? We have been in such continual correspondence over the summer, surely it would bring you such comfort to receive letters from a familiar friend?”

“Oh, Jesus,” he murmured, shaking his head, “It would be more than a comfort, Miss Smith, it would be a delight.” An airiness seemed to pass paper-light across Mary’s features, but then Dr Marshland continued, “But I will be staying with family and… well… you must understand that people will come to… conclusions.”

Her heart sunk, and seemed to block her windpipe, so when she took a breath, she stifled a half-sob and spluttered,

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“Oh, God, that sounds awful, doesn’t it? I do not mean that…” What was he to say? That, if he were at liberty to do so, he would get down on his knees and marry her at once? He could not say these things. He could never have said these things, but it would be worse now, when he was trying to sever this attachment as painlessly as possible, with as little blood as possible. But, to say nothing, would not only sound cruel, but would condemn him to the most agonising silence, enough to send him mad. “My mother is not a good sort of woman. Do not think I am ashamed of my connection with you. I am not. But she is not reasonable in all things. I-“

“Do not excuse yourself, Dr Marshland. I understand. My step-mother is not a good sort of woman, either.”

Dr Marshland nodded gravely, but assured Miss Smith,

“If I ever have the opportunity to do so, Miss Smith, I will write. But we cannot be writing the way we have done.”

She grinned at the thought of more letters, and nodded in understanding of their need for propriety, but could hardly count herself convinced. She was sure that Mrs Marshland was anticipating a London match. That is why she was calling him to London, and Dr Marshland knew this, and so refused their correspondence. A fashionable sort of girl. Bright clothes. Curled hair. A doctor’s wife, with a good dowry. Dr Marshland was not a wealthy man, after all. He would need a girl with a reasonable deal of money to recommend her to society. Surely, there was somebody already lined up for him. Dark haired, exceedingly pretty, prettier than she, who Jack Marshland would fawn over, and marry, and be endlessly happy with. She did not condemn him for this, of course. For who could blame him? And what had Miss Mary Smith to offer in order to recommend herself to him? A few girlish letters on a summer’s afternoon, and a pair of spectacles between friends.

“I will ask Dr Harrison of your wellbeing.” Her knuckles were as white as her bloodless cheeks, and her fingers were aching from the stress of gripping her skirts as tight as a vice. “Are you leaving promptly?”

“Tonight.”

“Oh! I wish you had said before! I would have prepared something: a farewell party. You will be sorely missed, Dr Marshland.”

“Yes, well, I did not want to cause a fuss. I have caused a fuss or two in Cranford already. I would rather slip away.”

“That’s not like you, Dr Marshland,” teased Mary, cocking her eyebrow and pushing the greyness down in her chest until she could no longer feel the tug of it. He bit his tongue, blushed, turned his face to the ground.

“Yes, well. As I said. I think I’ve caused enough trouble.”

He could not have known that he would make one last mess in Cranford. Though he suspected Miss Mary Smith’s fondness for him, he did not know for certain that he had broken her heart, and would leave it behind him, shattered. One last trouble. Very fitting. Very like him.

But Mary Smith was very adept at hiding a broken heart in the pocket of her gown, or swallowing it in her throat. And, as she gulped, and smiled meekly at him, and asked him of his plans for travel, he would never have suspected a thing. Jack Marshland, too, was a fine player and, beneath that veneer and the bravado, he was breaking his own heart.

He once told Dr Harrison that he was not in love with Miss Mary Smith. But, he felt, he did not know what love was, at that time. It took Mary Smith to teach him. It began as a fascination, fashioned itself into a fondness, a friendship, a laugh and a flirt, then it made him smitten, it thrilled him, it gave him pains, and then it began to claim his waking hours and disturb his sleeping ones, and soon it became letters, and then it became exactly what he thought he had understood: love. Though, perhaps, it had been that all along. But it took months to realise that. And only now, with the October rain making thunder on the shutters, and his bones shivering from the cold, did he recognise that he loved her indeed. He only knew his love when he was forced to end it.

Folly. Always folly.

“It could have been nice, though, couldn’t it? A farewell party?” he mused, fondly, giving a sad smile and tipping his head to one side, so his chin crinkled into his shoulder. It was a sweet look, Mary thought.

“You could have sung to us.” His voice still lingered in her head. That song he sang last Christmas: when the candlelight made everyone’s skin golden, and Mary was listening in a drowsy trance, each note piercing her and making her heart swell. And they had walked in the dark together, at the front of the group, and he held the burnished light, and they laughed, and with every word he spoke she could hear him sing. “I would love to hear you sing again,” she sighed, saying these words to herself, aloud.

“I must give you an aria! When I return!” he cried, drawing her back into herself and back into the room, and setting her smiling again. He puffed his chest out and waved his hands, brandishing, like a bad opera singer, over-acting.

“Oh, splendid. I look forward to it.”

“Queen of the Night, I am she.”

“You are never she!” Mary laughed, shaking her head profusely and burying her chin into her neck until it creased. Jack found that little expression of hers infinitely charming.

“You’ll see.” He winked. Mary blushed. He would have sung for her now, but he was afraid of what she would think, and of how weak his voice would sound.

She blushed through the silence and then said, with a low voice, trembling with the strength of her emotion,

“When you are ready… Cranford will have you back.”

Jack Marshland nodded, without a smile.

“I am glad of it.”

Miss Mary Smith could have sworn that there were tears shining in his eyes, but the room was rather dim, and her eyesight was poor without her spectacles on her nose, and so she convinced herself very quickly that she was imagining it. He had no need of tears; his career would take off in London, and he would find himself a beautiful bride in the perfect fashion. He would forget, and so would she.

And nothing else was said, except for the cordialities, and, before he left the room, he took a few steps towards her, lifted her hand from her skirts, brought it trembling into the air and, though his lips were still wet with the rain, he kissed the back of her hand affectionately, and Mary shivered. And then, as if caught on the wind, he fled the sitting room with a great deal of haste, and Mary heard the door close, and listened, half-dreaming, as the clatter of hooves, almost inaudible amongst the rain, signalled his final farewell.

She stood very still for what seemed like an age, reflecting, replaying that seemingly momentous chapter of her life again and again in her mind, quite dumbstruck. She eventually brought herself to sit. The room was very dark. She had only just become conscious of the shadows. She looked to the window. There was nothing but rain. Suddenly, without warning of them, she was racked by a fit of awful sobs, and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle them, but it was no good. The gorge of her grief, which had been pressed down, flooded up in the tears that she wept, and the cries in her throat, and the shuddering of her body.

Women, she felt, were condemned to be the wick of every candle. Constant, sealed in a waxen prison, awaiting another’s light. She was dependent upon a match, and it set her aflame. She burned, weeping, but had not the power in herself to set light to another. Why hadn’t she the power to move, as a match does, and start flames in darknesses?

Miss Matty had heard the presence of a guest. She had heard the name. She had stayed in the kitchen. She had heard him leave. And now she heard her dear girl sobbing her poor little heart out, and she came bundling into the sitting room, leaving Peter in the kitchen, to find the young woman pouring her heart into a shaking hand.


End file.
